Ballesteros, CristinaPaternina-Die, MaríaMartínez-García, MagdalenaLópez-Montoya, GonzaloNoguero, InésDesco, ManuelVilarroya, Oscarde Blas, Daniel MartínCarmona, Susana2025-07-232025-07-232025-03-07Sci Adv. 2025 Mar 7;11(10):eadt5619.https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12105/26837Childbirth is a life-changing event in a mother's life. While the transition to motherhood has recently been recognized as one of the most neuroplastic periods in adulthood, no study has yet explored whether the hippocampus and amygdala change during the peripartum in relation to childbirth experience and perinatal depression symptoms. In this longitudinal neuroimaging study, we assessed 88 first-time gestational mothers in late pregnancy and early postpartum and 30 nulliparous control women. We used optimized high-resolution MRI scans to quantify volumetric changes in the hippocampus and amygdala, along with their substructures. We found that increases in depression symptoms during the peripartum were positively correlated with changes in the right amygdala. A more challenging birth experience was associated with bilateral increases in hippocampal volume. These findings show that studying the neuroanatomical changes during the transition to motherhood can inform not only about adaptive processes but also about potential vulnerabilities, highlighting the importance of tracking perinatal experiences to enhance women's health.This work has been funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) through the project “PI22/01365” and cofunded by the European Union, the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 883069) and the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC). The CNIC is supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII), the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MICIU), and the Pro CNIC Foundation and is a Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence (grant CEX2020-001041-S funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033). C.B. was funded by the grant Intramural Programme of IiSGM for the Promotion of R&D&I 2023, subprogram “Pre-doctoral training contract.” S.C. was funded by Miguel Servet Type II research contract CPII21/00016 and co-funded by the European Social Fund “Investing in your future.”engVoRhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International40043136Science Advancesopen access